Friday, April 17, 2015
Highlights of the Week: April 17, 2015
Hello families,
We've had a busy, exciting week. Students worked hard to organize their notefacts into topic sections. Sounds simple, but it's a lot of steps. After we sorted our color coded facts students organized one color at a time. Reading the facts and then deciding what order to put them in to sound good. Sometimes students needed to add a transition sentence or change some words to make it sound smooth.
We read Your Fantastic Elastic Brain: Stretch it, Shape it and learned about all the parts of a brain, what they do, and how they work together. We learned about how the first 10 years of life are the most powerful for a brain to stretch and grow--the more you work hard to learn and make new connections in your brain, the more powerful your brain can be and the more you can learn throughout your life. We talked about how making mistakes is part of learning and how important they are. Making mistakes actually makes your brain stronger because it creates more connections between ideas and experiences. We also shared examples from our own lives about how we've made mistakes and persevered to learn new things. We talk a lot in our room about accepting how every person learns and how it's okay to make mistakes. This week we added to that idea by talking about perseverance. Talk at home about this--give your child an example from your life.
We continued working on map skills this week, especially about using map symbols and map keys to locate things on a map and how to interpret map symbols. We used the terms near and far to show the relationships between things on maps and also ourselves and things in our room.
Second grade mathematicians continued working on two and three digit subtraction. They also began using their geometry knowledge to learn about fractions. First grade mathematicians are working on the number+9 strategy with all numbers, using the doubles two apart addition strategy, and looking at number patterns.
We had many special events this week: storytellers, special music classes, All School Meeting, and Four Winds. All the 1st and 2nd graders did an amazing & courageous job singing "Old Texas" for the whole school at the ASM.
On Friday lots of gear went home with students as we did our big before vacation clean-out. We're very hopeful that the snow will melt over vacation. However, if there is still snow on the ground we will wear snowpants. Boots we need until the ground is dry, so this may take a bit longer. Please continue sending in indoor shoes as well as the necessary outdoor gear.
With the warmer weather this week we also talked about spring footwear. It is Rumney policy that students have sneakers or sandals that stay on their feet for P.E. and recess (i.e. not flip flops). Mr. Rosen says flip flops are okay for indoor shoes as long as they have secure footwear for recess and P.E. Thanks for your help in making sure your child is ready for each day's activities!
I hope you all have a wonderful vacation week and enjoy the holidays--Earth Day and Arbor Day-- that occur over this break.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Highlights of the Week 4.10.15
Dear Families,
Time flew by this week--I don't know how it's already Friday!
This week we finished our sound unit. Did you see your child's scientist journal come home with all of our observations and ideas from our sound experiments? We also began a new social studies unit on Maps. We talked about what maps are and why they are important. We made our first map of our bedrooms and practiced drawing a map from a "bird's eye view." This is a really hard concept so we'll be making lots of maps to practice this skill.
In literacy we talked about the general rule for vowel teams--"when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." However, we also talked about how there are always rule breakers. We reviewed the most common vowel teams for the long a and long e sounds on our vowel team poster. This is a resource always up in our room, having the letters-keyword-sound for each vowel team. Having a picture clue and keyword help us to remember the sound each vowel team typically makes.
In writing we finished color coding and cutting out our facts. On Thursday I did a mini-lesson showing how to use all the facts from one topic and try to put them in an order that makes sense and sounds good. Sometimes we needed to add words or change them to make it sound right. This editing process is a challenging piece of writing but important to begin to practice even in first and second grade. Next week we'll continue working on organizing all of our facts into "topic pages" for our reports!
On Friday we cashed in 82 sight word tallies that we'd banked as a class for 41 minutes of bonus recess! On Thursday we got to see the dress rehearsal of Honk! which has performances here at Rumney on Friday and Saturday. Check it out if you're around this weekend--it was an amazing production!
This week I was part of the hiring committee for the new music teacher. Our class was selected to be the "demonstration" class so we can see the teacher candidates in action. This means that next week our class will have some extra music time!
We have one more week before vacation and a lot in store--academics and special events, too! On Tuesday Mrs. Woodard has a duo of fabulous story tellers coming in to share their art with us. Don't forget we will be performing a song at the All School Meeting on Thursday (2:30-3:15). We'll also have 4 Winds on Friday next week.
Have a great weekend!
Time flew by this week--I don't know how it's already Friday!
This week we finished our sound unit. Did you see your child's scientist journal come home with all of our observations and ideas from our sound experiments? We also began a new social studies unit on Maps. We talked about what maps are and why they are important. We made our first map of our bedrooms and practiced drawing a map from a "bird's eye view." This is a really hard concept so we'll be making lots of maps to practice this skill.
In literacy we talked about the general rule for vowel teams--"when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." However, we also talked about how there are always rule breakers. We reviewed the most common vowel teams for the long a and long e sounds on our vowel team poster. This is a resource always up in our room, having the letters-keyword-sound for each vowel team. Having a picture clue and keyword help us to remember the sound each vowel team typically makes.
In writing we finished color coding and cutting out our facts. On Thursday I did a mini-lesson showing how to use all the facts from one topic and try to put them in an order that makes sense and sounds good. Sometimes we needed to add words or change them to make it sound right. This editing process is a challenging piece of writing but important to begin to practice even in first and second grade. Next week we'll continue working on organizing all of our facts into "topic pages" for our reports!
On Friday we cashed in 82 sight word tallies that we'd banked as a class for 41 minutes of bonus recess! On Thursday we got to see the dress rehearsal of Honk! which has performances here at Rumney on Friday and Saturday. Check it out if you're around this weekend--it was an amazing production!
This week I was part of the hiring committee for the new music teacher. Our class was selected to be the "demonstration" class so we can see the teacher candidates in action. This means that next week our class will have some extra music time!
We have one more week before vacation and a lot in store--academics and special events, too! On Tuesday Mrs. Woodard has a duo of fabulous story tellers coming in to share their art with us. Don't forget we will be performing a song at the All School Meeting on Thursday (2:30-3:15). We'll also have 4 Winds on Friday next week.
Have a great weekend!
Friday, April 3, 2015
Highlights of the Week 4.3.15
Hello families,
It was great to meet with all of you this week at conferences. We had fun during our school days too.
One of our biggest projects this week was designing cup telephones as a culminating activity for our sound unit. Students worked in pairs to design a cup telephone with these materials: fishing line, twine, dental floss, small waxed paper cups, medium thin plastic cups, big heavy plastic cups. Students measured the lines so we could test each phone over a distance of 3 yard (9 feet). They did a great job designing, constructing, and improving their phones. They were amazed at how well they worked, too!
We also did the next big step in our PLPs. We used our guiding questions to think about the topics we will write about. Then students color coded their facts to match their topics. We'll use this system to help us next week to organize our facts into topics for our reports.
We also had 2 special buddy activities: sugaring and an egg hunt!
The best thing of all was that on Friday when we went outside, we got to wear boots and snowpants but no jackets--it was a beautiful 54 degrees! However, even as the days get warmer, please do still send in boots, snowpants, mittens/gloves, and jackets/sweatshirts. While there is snow on the ground you can be sure your child is playing in it, crawling through it, and building with it. We wear boots and snowpants to recess until the ground is dry--so please continue sending them in!
Thanks for checking in on our classroom news. Have a fantastic weekend!
It was great to meet with all of you this week at conferences. We had fun during our school days too.
One of our biggest projects this week was designing cup telephones as a culminating activity for our sound unit. Students worked in pairs to design a cup telephone with these materials: fishing line, twine, dental floss, small waxed paper cups, medium thin plastic cups, big heavy plastic cups. Students measured the lines so we could test each phone over a distance of 3 yard (9 feet). They did a great job designing, constructing, and improving their phones. They were amazed at how well they worked, too!
We also did the next big step in our PLPs. We used our guiding questions to think about the topics we will write about. Then students color coded their facts to match their topics. We'll use this system to help us next week to organize our facts into topics for our reports.
We also had 2 special buddy activities: sugaring and an egg hunt!
The best thing of all was that on Friday when we went outside, we got to wear boots and snowpants but no jackets--it was a beautiful 54 degrees! However, even as the days get warmer, please do still send in boots, snowpants, mittens/gloves, and jackets/sweatshirts. While there is snow on the ground you can be sure your child is playing in it, crawling through it, and building with it. We wear boots and snowpants to recess until the ground is dry--so please continue sending them in!
Thanks for checking in on our classroom news. Have a fantastic weekend!
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